


I'll Carve My Rules Out of Flesh and Blood

by RoseintheWind



Series: Iwaoi Week 2020 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AU Where People Can't Touch Each Other, Discovery, Divorce, M/M, Please don't get the wrong idea with the first paragraph lmao, This story IS IN 3RD PERSON, Touch-Starved, iwaoi week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseintheWind/pseuds/RoseintheWind
Summary: ~~Iwaoi Week Day 1- Touch~~Oikawa knows what the feeling of skin is like. He's got his own after all, racing blood when he's excited, tingling when a sensation happens, pinpricking him with pain when something is wrong. He knows what that feels like all on himself.He's been told that other people are supposed to feel the same way.But he can't believe such a thing. Not when he's not allowed to touch the very fabrics of the people of the world around him.
Relationships: Hanamaki Takahiro/Matsukawa Issei (Brief), Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Series: Iwaoi Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035180
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	I'll Carve My Rules Out of Flesh and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Well hello there. It's kinda been a while. So I've been working on Iwaoi week for the past month and a half and it has been a rollercoaster. I was not expecting the week to turn into ten days and then after I start to work on it I suddenly get busy with my hardest class for three hours a day and a bad spot in my mental health. Funnily enough, just a couple days ago, my scuffed ass computer decided it didn't want to use the left shift key, six key, eight key, or nine key. I've found alternatives but it's been incredibly funny and frustrating. But we're here now, I'm finishing lots of stuff, and we're still in covid. But I think things are getting better. This has been an incredibly fun activity to do regardless. So I hope you enjoy day 1 of Iwaoi week just as much as I've had fun writing it!  
> P.S. Something I'd also just like to say is that I tried my hardest on this, but this has been my biggest project I've ever attempted. I'm really sorry if some of the plots feel boring from spots of lack of motivation or inspiration. But I hope you enjoy it regardless, and I think I'm also going to be putting music to the stories (I think), so make sure to check out the series just to see :)

It's a clear summer day when they touch for the first time in greeting. Barley old enough to know how to socialize, the little infants love showing each other the wonders of their own world, one that maybe only the other would understand. Flashes of push and pull, stop and go. Crash into this, hone in on that. You called me something I'd never heard before. I think I'm supposed to hate it but I don't. I want to know more about you. What do you feel like, someone who has the same moldable skin? What are you looking for in an expansless playground? Your hair, it's all spiky. It feels weird and reminds me of the rug I love to roll around in. Oh yeah? Well, your hair is all fluffy. It reminds me of my stuffed animals that I like to cuddle with. 

I touched my hand to yours, the heat searing against my palm. You folded your hand into mine as if you'd never felt it before. I would believe it too. 

What would it feel like if I put the grains of sand into your hair? What new feeling would I experience then? And if I ran my hands over yours after we play in the playground. Would your hands feel all bumpy and hurt as mine do? If we rubbed our feet fast enough on the slide would it shock you as it shocked me? 

They won't let us find out. That sudden touch, that spark I know we both felt, can I feel it again? Will they let us? I don't know why we're not allowed to do it anymore.

To not know the world when you haven't experienced it enough. What does that feel like for the first time?

In school, they are taught not to touch anything or any _ one _ more specifically that doesn't hold any merit. New parents and families tentatively touch their children, but with love and inexperience from the rules set in place. Oikawa meets Iwaizumi in elementary school over and over again, but they're separated by large margins because they're gloveless. But he's glad to call the one person that isn't his blood that he's touched, his best friend.

Gloves are massly worn by society, in public to avoid direct contact with strangers. 

" _ What if you were to be touched by a stranger? _ " __ Is the greatest fear of the population. "You'd be tainted for  _ life. _ "

"Tooru, your purity is too important to us." His parents say one day, that same day in the park. "You're not supposed to be touching people."

"Why not?"

"Because. It'll hurt you. People won't like you. So don't touch people, okay? And take these."

Oikawa walks into school the next day with white, satin gloves. They tug whenever he curls his fingers and are tight around the thickness of his hand. He hates them. He feels so cold.

"What are those?" Iwaizumi asks. 

"Gloves. I'm not supposed to be barely touching people. Didn't they put them on the required dress code that you had to have for next week?"

"Oh...maybe."

Iwaizumi shows up with gloves the next day. They're black and worn but cover his skin. Iwaizumi says he hates them too.

Oikawa knows he's been taught not to touch people. But he high fives Iwaizumi once in a while when he's proud of him. He doesn't know why he keeps doing it, he acts like he's addicted. It's only the frailest of touches, one without heat or the feeling of the person of who Iwaizumi is from the gloves, but it's as much as he'll ever get from someone else. 

The teachers always glare at him, but he couldn't care less.

It thunderstorms one night, a few years into the future where rules have been ingrained and life seems normal with them. The storm continues on, brashly against the city. Iwaizumi watches the rain, sees how the droplets race down the glass. He hears the thunder rumble in the distance and the lightning flare from the sky. He turns around and suddenly there's a knock on his window. 

He opens it, and the rain splatters through along with a rain-soaked Oikawa.

"Oikawa?" He asks, his voice barely above a whisper. "What are you doing here?"

"Well." He coughs once. "I thought I'd come visit and see Iwa-chan's famous room!" 

"I don't think I've ever mentioned it once."

Oikawa waves him off. "So, what do you have he-" A clap of thunder overshadows his words and he jumps, almost into Iwaizumi's arms but flinches away in time.

"Are you scared of thunder?" 

"W-what? Of course not!" It's a lie, of course, his shocked jump instantly contradicting his words. 

"Hey, I have this really cool place here if you want. It's safe."

Oikawa looks around the room. There's nothing of note that could be considered a "hideout" unless they were to be cramped against the inside of the closet or under his bed. 

But Iwaizumi pulls his chair across his room to the edge of his bed and took to his closet. He pulled out an extra blanket, covers the chair in it, and places it on his bed. He takes a batch of Christmas lights and loops them underneath and turns them on. There, was a hideout. Covered in gold and blue from the blanket, it almost looked ethereal. Or as ethereal as something could look in a twelve-year-olds bedroom. 

"Come down here!"

It's nothing spectacular, just a hideaway from the rest of his room but it provides Oikawa with an actual sense of comfort. Before he'd hide in his room, covers up and flinch every time he'd heard a noise. 

But here it felt like he was being guarded under the stars and even the outside sounds seemed muffled.

"So, what do you think?" Iwaizumi asks him. 

"This is so  _ awesome _ ! You make this all the time?"

"Well...whenever I'm lonely..."

"We should do this again someti-" The thunder strikes again along with a muffled light. Turns out the covers weren't as soundproof as he thought. 

He jumps to the nearest thing he can hold onto, which just happens to be Iwaizumi's hand. He doesn't even realize until he calms down. 

Iwaizumi's mouth circles and he just stares at their interlocked hands. He doesn't say anything. Neither of them do. 

It's been so long since Oikawa's touched someone else. When was the last time he's ever felt someone else's heartbeat tattooing into their skin? His parents told him it was "purity" and "societal norm" not to do it but why? Why when you could have the feeling of someone else right next to your skin. Like your blood was made to feel that of another, rushing in a pleased fashion. Humans are warm-blooded creatures. But without the warmth of others, what was the point in artificial heat at all?

Iwaizumi still isn't saying anything. Oikawa hopes that's a good sign. 

They stay like that for a while. With the rain pouring down and the storm eventually petering out, it feels like an eternity, but not one of unpleasantness. 

"Hajime! It's time for bed!"

They startle apart. 

"Well, I should be going back," Oikawa says. "Nice to see you Iwa-chan!"

"Okay. Just...don't fall out of a tree or something."

"I won't Iwa-chan! See you tomorrow!" 

Oikawa puts on a fake smile for the rest of the week. The two of them almost stay in inner solitude for just as long.

It hits hard. They sprung it on Iwaizumi like he just wouldn't care; like this wasn't going to destroy his whole life. His parents were getting a divorce. His mother had cheated, always lenient about the touching rule, she needed more from someone else to give her what she didn't have. 

He, and mostly his father felt betrayed. It didn't help that his father found out through a text. 

"Supposed to be a one-time thing." Was bullshit reasoning anyway. It was supposed to be a never thing, she was supposed to be complacent with the rules, his father said. Of course. But Iwaizumi wasn't exactly one complacent with the rules. 

When he went to the court case, mind numb and ears constantly not hearing half of what everyone was saying, his father won custody of a child who would only be around for another two or three years. 

The last thing his mother said though before he wasn't allowed to see her for a while, even though it was that of a cheater, felt like he was supposed to hear it. 

She cups his face. "Hajime, I'm sorry. You don't have to forgive me, and that's not what I'm asking for. But, if there's anyone that you feel you should be with or want to be with, please go after them. You deserve an opportunity at love." She looks forlornly at his father who isn't looking at her. "Goodbye. I love you, I'll see you soon." There are tears in her eyes as she walks away.

She tells him somewhere down the line that she wishes it didn't turn out that way. That she wished she had communicated and not split with resentment hollowed in his father's eyes. She wishes they weren't confined to a world with rules such as this, and in any other would never take for granted her husband's comfort that can only be provided in actions alone.

He doesn't know where he's going. As far as he can is the only answer he can provide. Running, and running, and running, and running, as far as he can, so he can forget the entirety of human civilization and the feeling of touching another person. 

His phone buzzes multiple times but he ignores it all. He doesn't want to hear it. 

He sits and curls into himself on the hill in the middle of nowhere, a tainted blue sky boundless over the expanses of the empty hills. 

"Iwa-chan?" He barely startles, but his mind jolts awake.

"How did you find me?" He asks, voice tired and scratched. 

"I just know you." Oikawa shrugs.

"What does that even mean? I've never been here."

"Well, aren't you glad that I know you then."

Oikawa stands, watching the horizon like an asshole protagonist contemplating something. 

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know, do I  _ look  _ okay?"

"Functional!" 

"Then sure."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"What is there to say? She cheated. She was caught. They split. I feel-I don't know what I feel!"

"I'm sorry."

"No, I don't want to drag you into it too."

Oikawa sits, his hand eerily close when he sets it down to rest on it. They don't speak, comfortable in each other's silence. Oikawa inches his hand closer. He lightly touches Iwiazumi's pinky to his. Iwaizumi flinches, but not away. Oikawa curls his finger around his, nothing more, nothing less. Iwaizumi tenses but sits in the same spot. 

Eventually, the sun starts to set and the pinks and blues paint the horizon. Oikawa silently brings their hands up, their pinky's still interlocked. He spreads his hands like he's encasing the sun in them and giving it to Iwaizumi. 

"Hey, Iwa-chan. If you ever need anything, come to me okay?"

"As always, idiot." He hovers his left hand over Oikawa's fluffy brown hair, subconsciously remembering a childhood thought of touching it someday, just to feel it. He hesitates for a few seconds before it settles down on his head and inexpertly plays with it. Oikawa looks at him, innocently curious before his mouth breaks into a smile.

Aoba Johsai's no touching campaigns are incredibly annoying, Oikawa deduces as he enters his third year. It's constant through the mass amount of posters, and reminders through every announcement. Your gloves are the most important thing about you. Iwaizumi's father has also now made sure that his clothing was in no way revealing. 

Oikawa's sick of it, frankly. He's so tired of hearing accounts of "purity" and how "saving yourself is the best way to live". He's already given himself up in physicality and heart. It's just too bad he has no way to say that and have it make up for the number of years he's spent without another constant human feel. 

"Hey, Oikawa. Are we eating on the roof again today?"

"With Makki and Mattsun? Yeah."

Hanamaki and Matsukawa are already up there, holding hands like the perfect rebels they are. Always two to want to fuck the system, they've done whatever they can to piss off sticklers to the rules, even before they started dating. 

"Oh hey, guys." Hanamaki greets as they walk up the steps. 

"Still in denial, Oikawa?" Matsukawa asks. 

Oikawa huffs. "I have no idea what you're talking about." 

"What am I missing here?" Iwaizumi asks. 

"They want us to join their hand-holding thing, publicly." Oikawa doesn't actually mind it, but that wasn't what Matsukawa was referring to anyway.

Matsukawa barks a laugh. "You act as if it's something illegal."

"Could be." Iwaizumi mutters.

"Oikawa, you know that wasn't what I was talking about."

"Oh,  _ ha ha _ , very funny Mattsun. Now I'm hungry."

"Whatever you say Oikawa." 

They sit down, Iwaizumi and Oikawa mere inches away apart from each other. Hanamaki and Matsukawa share twin grins that Iwaizumi and Oikawa ignore. 

They continue being them, closer as friends, family accepting of their relationship as they "continue to obey" the rules. But they share these moments, use them for the days that they feel at their worse, and very rarely, at their best. 

Oikawa stays over at Iwaizumi's mother's place for the first time. It's nothing fancy, two bedrooms and a bathroom along with a living room and a kitchen in a half-apartment-like setting. When the two come over, she springs into Iwaizumi's arms, incredibly happy to see her son. She won't hug Oikawa but greets him with such enthusiasm that it feels as if she were. 

She tells them she has to step out for work and won't be back until late. Iwaizumi's glad that she seems to be feeling better after all of those months. 

They finish homework and make themselves dinner. 

"Iwa-chan, we should watch a movie." 

"Yeah? Like what?" Iwaizumi asks, rhetorical and half-assed because he already knows what he wants to watch.

"Godzilla." Iwaizumi says to answer his own question at the same time Oikawa says "A Wrinkle in Time.".

"Oh hell no, we're not watching another alien movie. That's what we literally did last time."

"But Iwa-chan! This one isn't really about aliens, it's about space! And besides, you  _ always  _ want to watch Godzilla."

"Because it's a good movie."

"But we can't watch that all the time!"

They end up searching for the DVDs. They don't have a Wrinkle in Time.

Oikawa falls asleep about halfway into Iwaizumi gloating that they have Godzilla after they pop it in. Iwaizumi wants to smack him for not getting enough sleep but can't, not with the expression that sits peacefully on Oikawa's face. Oikawa falls over, right into Iwaizumi but doesn't startle. If anything he slides closer, body covered in clothes that don't touch Iwaizumi's bare skin. One of Oikawa's hands sneaks into his. 

He still hasn't gotten used to the feeling. Does anyone when they aren't constantly touched like that?  _ The rules, the rules.  _ They always say. They are ingrained.  _ Keep your purity, for you are a gift. Skin is protection and exposed blood is the result of taintment. You are for yourself and select people you know. Not strangers, not friends. That is harming yourself, and we wouldn't want that would we? _

Iwaizumi watches Oikawa, the smooth, slow rhythm of his breathing, the lock of hair that falls over his eyes that he dare not move. 

He wonders if the voices of "You're setting yourself up for betrayal" will go away if he looks at Oikawa enough, movie discarded. 

His mother walks through the door and gives a small, knowing smile. He feels sick. 

Oikawa watches the teachers suspend another student for giving a classmate a piece of paper gloveless. He's so sick of it, watching now as a third year. He envies Hanamaki and Mastukawa's ability to do it freely and not care. He envies Iwaizumi's mother, how she's away from the pressure and expectations even though she cheated and is someone who's divorced. He envies the children that they were, young and innocent, who touched that first time, were scolded, but got away with it. He envies it all, like a forbidden item he was never meant to have and is now hooked on the idea of securing when it truly can't exist.

He comes home with Iwaizumi to see Iwaizumi's father talking to his parents. They wave to both of them as he and Iwaizumi head upstairs. While a surprise, watching their parents talk was becoming less and less uncommon. 

"Iwa-chan." Oikawa starts as they sit in his room. "Do you think you're finally going to find someone after you graduate?"

"What the fuck? What brought that up?"

"Well, don't you want to feel something from someone else?"

"Are you seriously asking me if I need someone else as if it's going to be like 'the start of my life' or something? Like if I finally get to 'oppress' the rules I'm finally a person?"

"Well...no, I just thought-"

Iwaizumi flicks his forehead. "Well, you're thinking too much dumbass. It's not that important."

"Not that important huh..." He grabs Iwaizumi's shirt and pulls him downstairs. 

"Shittykawa what the  _ hell  _ are you doing?" For as angry as Iwaizumi sounds he can hear an undertone of fear.

"Something unimportant."

With all of the startled parents in Oikawa's kitchen looking at them, Oikawa grabs Iwaizumi's hand and folds into it, tightly grasped. 

The parents are in shock. Oikawa's mother has her hand covered to her mouth. Oikawa's father looks enraged. Iwaizumi's father looks disgusted. 

"Tooru Oikawa, what the hell are you doing." His father asks, more like a gritted, rhetorical statement than a question.

"Something I should've replicated a long time ago."

Iwaizumi's father grabs Iwaizumi by his shirt sleeve and walks out the door without a word with a sputtering Iwaizumi. 

"Tooru,  _ why _ ?" His mother asks, aghast. 

"Because it felt right." 

"Because it felt right." His father mimicks. "I don't even know what to do with someone who...who's  _ filthy _ like you."

Oikawa's mother gasps. "No, that's not like Tooru. He's not-"

"I'm sorry I've disappointed you." Oikawa cuts her off. "But I'm not going to lose the one thing that makes me happy without you knowing first." He opens the door and leaves. 

He runs, runs like Iwaizumi did when he found out about the divorce. Except he doesn't go far, just a secluded area in the nearby park. He dials Iwaizumi's phone. It rings, once, twice-

"Oikawa what were you  _ thinking _ ?"

"Can you meet me at the park?"

"Can I meet you at the-no! Do you understand what you've just done? I know you're an asshole but now I'm never going to get to leave the house, ever! I'll never see you again either!  _ God _ , what the  _ fuck _ ."

"Just-I'm sorry. But there's something I have to tell you. You can ignore me the rest of your life, or hate me or whatever you want but I have to tell you this, but not over the phone."

" _ Fuck _ , fine. Where are you?"

"Iwa-chan, I'm so sorry. I just-"

"I  _ know  _ Oikawa, I get it. I don't understand why now though. Of all times, why did you pick now?"

"Because I had to do this. Do you remember that time when we first met?"

"At this same park, right? Over there?" Iwaizumi points to a playground in the distance.

"Yeah, right over there. That day, I touched someone else for the first time, and that same person has been my best friend for years now. What I'm trying to say is, I don't think it's possible. For someone to go their entire lives without living off of someone else, and having to wait for one specific someone for that same rest of their life." Heat and touch, something that is mutually exclusive, relish in going hand-in-hand. The curiousness of a child, the admiration of a teenager, and the love of an adult. All things that have to be felt to understand. 

"Touch is like home right? Feeling familiar things? And I-I feel like I've missed something my whole life. Please tell me you feel like that too."

It feels like a gut-punch to Iwaizumi's stomach. Now that Oikawa is laying it out, it's all starting to make sense. He can only nod in reply. 

" _ You are home to me, Iwa-chan _ ." Oikawa all but whispers. "And I feel too homesick."

Iwaizumi could melt right there. Here, Oikawa had said it perfectly, his thoughts and feelings he could never articulate. So he reaches out and lightly touches Oikawa's palms before slipping his hands into his. If that wasn't enough of a blow, Oikawa gets so close, so dangerously close. He presses his lips to Iwaizumi's. The sensory overload is like lightning is passing through his body and sparking up his veins much like that night so many years ago under the storm. 

And to Oikawa, all of this feels right. Like every parallel universe, he believes the science fiction movies are telling him that this is right, and the cosmos have to be wrong. 

When they step back, Oikawa holds onto Iwaizumi's hand tight, almost as if he's afraid he'll be let go. But Iwaizumi grips tight too, not looking to separate from the only steady ground he's ever walked on. 

They walk on the sidewalk back to their neighbourhood, holding hands for all to see. 

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure to follow me on twitter @phoenixesse or tumblr @rosiey9 for updates and rebloggings/retweets of people's cool things because I can't do art :)


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